


lost my head in san francisco

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Earthquakes, First Time, Headaches & Migraines, Hotel Sex, Internalized Homophobia, Just a LOT of California stuff, M/M, Podfic Welcome, Sharing a Bed, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:27:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27648866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: Daniel and Johnny take their respective students to the state karate tournament in San Francisco. Things go a little off the rails.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 105
Kudos: 535





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is set vaguely somewhere in late season 2 before everyone's lives went to hell. let's get weird, people!

“Do you know how many people live in California?" Johnny asked. Neither of his kids answered. It was the third time he'd asked that afternoon. "40 million. I looked it up on the Google. You'd think we'd be better at crowd management."

He thought the time he took Miguel to a competition in Irvine was unbearable – an hour in LA traffic, where Diaz got far too much enjoyment out of watching him curse at other drivers until his veins were red and popping – and he’d still been able to get home to drink on his own couch by nine after that one.

But this one. _This one_ involved two students, a plane ride that got delayed an hour and a half, and something called an Uber where he had to pay a fake taxi driver _eighty American dollars_ to take them to the hotel. 

A hotel that was completely overrun. Apparently every event in the state of California was happening right here, right now. Shrieking kids from at least ten different dojos ran across the lobby to greet their friends. Middle-aged guests with wedding presents tucked under their arms tapped their feet impatiently. A bunch of freakishly young men wearing t-shirts that said _Disrupt Kubernetes_ on them walked around fiddling with their lanyards.

“What’s Kubernetes?” He asked Miguel, when his comment of population got no response. “Is it Spanish?”

“It's a container-orchestration system, Sensei," Aisha said. "It lets you deploy apps automatically.” He stared at her blankly, and she sighed. “No, it’s not Spanish.”

It took Johnny ten minutes to get to the check-in desk, only to be told this line was for guests of the Cohen-Schwartz wedding, and he’d have to go to stand in the crush of other random people again.

“Thank you for your patience ladies and gentlemen,” one of the women behind the front desk called out to the room, clapping her hands. “Unfortunately, The Laurel Hotel has been overbooked, so we’re figuring out how to fit as many people in as we can. Please help yourself to some complimentary coffee while you wait.”

A groan rose up. The Cobra Kai kids sat on top of their suitcases, looking defeated. Johnny was tempted to join them.

“Can you get me some Advil?” he asked Miguel, rubbing his temple with the knuckle of a balled-up fist. “It’s in the outside pocket of my bag.”

All he wanted to do was have a drink and lie down. Miguel handed him the bottle and he popped two pills dry, swallowing hard and grimacing.

“What’s wrong with your sensei?” A young, female voice asked behind him. It wasn’t Aisha, but he still recognized it.

“He’s just got a headache,” Miguel dropped his voice. “I think he gets overwhelmed in crowds.”

Johnny turned around, using the Advil bottle to point admonishingly. “I do not get _‘overwhelmed'_ , Diaz.” Where did the kid get shit like that? Probably his mother. Carmen had said that he seemed _shy_ the first few times he’d gone over for dinner. 

He’s not _shy._ He's fifty years old and the plane seats were too narrow and he's tired and hungry and people in Northern California are loud assholes who didn't know how to run hotels and if he didn’t get somewhere quiet in the next ten seconds he was going to punch a bellhop.

He saw the girl’s voice belonged to Samantha LaRusso, standing next to her father, both of them wearing athleisure wear that probably cost more than Johnny’s rent. His own son was behind Daniel, peeking at him through the gaps in their shoulders. 

“Yeah, you seem like you’re feeling very Zen,” Daniel joked. “Guess I should’ve figured everyone would try to book the hotel across the street from the arena.”

The jackass looked completely put together and peppy. Probably flew first class with cucumbers on his eyes. Johnny raised a hand in an awkward greeting to his son.

“Hey kid.”

He knew they were coming, from a text Robby sent him a few weeks before. They still didn’t talk much – he spent his nights doing God knows what with girls, and most of the day at school or Miyagi-Do. Still, the occasional _are your eyes blue i’m doing a Punnett square in bio_ or _we’re going to States in San Fran are you guys_ was better than nothing. Johnny’d even learned how to reply with thumbs-up emojis.

Still. Of all the gin joints in all the world....

Robby nodded curtly. He was probably trying to keep his game face on, but it still made something in Johnny’s gut twist. The six of them all stared at each other in awkward silence for one second, three–

“Well, I guess we’ll see you on the mat,” Daniel said bracingly, and led Robby and Sam past them. 

“You’re not going to be able to check in, there’s no more rooms,” Aisha said helpfully. Too helpfully. Johnny would have to talk to her about letting people fail for themselves. 

Sam turned around, a little wrinkle of confusion appearing between her eyebrows. “We have a reservation.”

“And we don’t, LaRusso?” Johnny said, as two six-year-olds in blue gis darted through the group, nearly knocking him over. “Hey, _watch it_!”

“I have a Silver Elite card,” Daniel said, trying to look sheepish and instead just looking proud of himself. Dick. “Priority booking on the suites.”

 _What is this, a fucking airplane?_ Johnny made a fist against his leg, fully aware that punching LaRusso’s lights out could get his kids disqualified and himself thrown in the tank for the night.

LaRusso – the little one, _Sam_ , he had to stop calling both of them that – looked at Aisha, chewed her lip. “...do you guys want to come hang out in the suite until they find your rooms?”

“Oh, nah–” Johnny started, stiffening, but Daniel looked down at his daughter with a soft expression. Proud of her, the princess lowering the drawbridge.

Behind them, Robby rolled his eyes.

“No, it’s….” Daniel waves off whatever invisible wave of tension is rearing up in front of him, puts on that car dealership smile. “Yeah, why not? You can put your bags down, go get dinner, and when you come back they’ll have this all sorted out.”

“Sounds good!” Miguel said, already hopping up and grinning at Sam with moon-y eyes. Aisha looked up at Johnny, ready to wait some more if he said the word. But her hands were closed hopefully around the straps of her bags.

_There’s no reason we have to be at war._

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. Okay. Fall in.”


	2. Chapter 2

The mini-fridge in LaRusso’s room was full of nothing but hipster White Claw crap, but Johnny took one out anyway, enjoying the satisfying _beep_ of the sensor charging it to Daniel’s card.

“Hey! Those are $11,” Daniel protested. Johnny cracked it and took a long, deep swig without breaking eye contact. Or at least, he tried to. His headache was getting worse, pulsing with such intensity his vision was blurring.

“C’mon, isn’t business at Larusso Auto Group booming?”

Daniel clicked his tongue, pointed at Johnny. “Okay, only because if you drink it, Sam and Robby can't be tempted.”

“So generous.”

The suite reminded Johnny of the kind in LA he used to stay in as a kid, on Sid’s dime. Plush, nondescript. A little kitchenette, a living room, a balcony with a killer view of the bay and the Golden Gate bridge. He counted two bedrooms, connected by a bathroom with both a shower and an honest-to-god clawfoot tub. 

Aisha immediately climbed inside it, fully clothed, and started taking selfies. It was going to be hard to get Cobra Kai out of this room. 

“You’re not gonna let my kid and your kid…” he jutted his chin towards the open door, the single mattress laying accusingly as Sam dumped out her clothes and make-up on it, Miguel watching her adoringly from the doorway. Daniel rolled his eyes. 

“I’m going to give them each a room and sleep on the couch,” he said. “They’re the ones competing tomorrow, I want them well-rested.”

“And, if you’re out here, you can see if one of them tries to sneak into the other’s room for funny business.” 

Daniel smirked. “You know your Dad Moves well, Sensei Lawrence.”

Johnny shrugged, finished off the pathetically small White Claw can and tried to ignore the rolling waves of pain in his skull. He figured Robby was having sex – God knows he was at that age – but it was probably a whole other level of freaking out when you had a girl. The LaRussos would be the ones stuck dealing with any baby that resulted from that unholy union. Ew. Now he wanted another drink.

But when he tried to reach down and open the fridge again, he swayed, woozy. His hand shot out and gripped the edge of the kitchenette counter hard as he tried to breathe through his nose. 

Something was rising up inside him, sour. It felt like a needle was piercing through the side of his skull.

“Can we go get dinner?” Sam asked, emerging in a completely different outfit than she’d been wearing when Johnny glanced over two minutes before. Jeez, maybe they _should_ be keeping a closer eye on the kids if they could get in and out of clothes that fast. 

“Sure, sweetie,” Daniel said, kissing her on the top of her head. “You and Robby are going to love this place, it’s really authentic sushi, run by second-generation Japanese-Americans–”

Johnny keeled over and vomited on the floor. 

“Ew!” Sam shrieked, skittering back against the wall. 

“Oh my God, Sensei, are you okay?” Miguel rushed forward, but Daniel put up his arm like a safety bar to hold him back.

“Give him space, give him space. Not a fan of sushi, huh?” he cracked. 

Johnny glared up at him from under his eyebrows, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll clean it up,” he managed. “Just give me a second, I can’t fucking see straight.”

“I think he has a migraine,” Miguel said.

“You a doctor, Diaz?” Johnny snapped. “Chicks get migraines. I just...sometimes have headaches that make me puke.”

He wished everyone would stop staring at him. There was something uniquely mortifying about throwing up in front of another person, let alone five. Let alone your students, your son, and your childhood karate rival.

“Robby, go get your dad some water from the tap,” Daniel said. “Johnny, come on, you need to lie down.”

LaRusso took Johnny by the elbow, but the second he tried to lead him towards the empty bedroom, Johnny threw him off and plopped down on the couch with as much dignity as he could muster. Eyes closed, he felt Robby push a plastic cup of water into his hands. He drank the whole thing in massive gulps, trying to get the putrid taste out of his mouth. 

“I’m fine,” he said. The darkness behind his eyelids felt nice. “I just need a minute. Mr. Diaz, Miss Robinson, go get some dinner. I think I saw an In-N-Out down the block.”

“Come on, John," Daniel said, seemingly on reflex. "You take these kids to one of the cuisine hubs of the world – not the country, the _world_ – and you want them to eat the crap they can get in Reseda for two bucks?”

Johnny opened his eyes. The kids waited in an uncertain cluster by the sink. Robby looked a little pale. LaRusso was standing over him, dumb eyebrows lifted halfway up his forehead. “They need protein, idiot.”

The corner of Daniel’s mouth tugged up, but he fought it down so fast it almost looked like a muscle spasm. “Okay. Two for an important cultural experience and two for Johnny Lawrence’s fear of foreign food.”

“I eat foreign food all the time,” he said. “ _Pizza_ is from _Italy_.”

Daniel pulled his dark navy hoodie back on and beckoned the kids towards the door. “Why don't you just take a minute? We’ll bring you something back.”

Johnny closed his eyes again, listened to the door open, jackets zip up. “Do not sabotage my students with raw fish.”

As soon as he heard the door close he slid onto his back, stretching out on the length of the couch. His legs hung over the arm by a good six inches. He needed to clean up the kitchen, to find their room, to ask for one of those wake-up call things so Cobra Kai wasn’t late to sign in tomorrow. He needed to get more water. 

Once, when he was fourteen, the first year Kreese let him enter competitions, an older student named Sean had come down with the flu during a tournament in Santa Cruz. He’d been burning up the whole weekend, clammy and sweaty. Kreese gripped his shoulders firmly and said, “Mr. O’Connell. You need to pull it together.”

Sean made it to the finals, and slept the entire car ride home. You rest when you win.

Through a sliver in his cracked eyes, he saw the colors of San Francisco Bay, the sun orange over the water. His last thought before the pain and exhaustion pulled him under was _Pull it together, Lawrence. Stand up._

* * *

When Miguel woke him, shaking his shoulder, it was dark outside, the lights of the suite scorching his eyes. 

“I brought you Gatorade!” He shoved the red bottle under Johnny’s chin as he sat up, groggy and stiff. “I saw this health lady on Instagram say that it’s really good for replacing electrolytes when you have a migr–a bad headache.”

Johnny nodded in thanks, unscrewing the top, trying to blink the scene into focus. The place was crawling with kids again. The air smelled like Clorox; someone had cleaned up his embarrassing loss of control. Robby sat at the kitchenette counter, picking at a plastic take-out box full of rice and seaweed. He caught his father’s eye. 

“You okay?” he asked.

Johnny took a big sip, then another. He did feel a little better. The light didn’t make him want to pass out or ralph again. Miguel handed a greasy paper bag with fries and an Animal Style burger inside. God bless that kid.

“We got this for you on the way back, I know you don’t like sushi, but the place Mr. LaRusso took us was _nothing_ like Beni-Hana, they–” He held up a hand to quiet Miguel’s chatter. Aisha and Sam had emerged from one of the bedrooms, both in silky, button-up shirts and shorts. 

“Miss Robinson, what’s with the get-up?” he said. She tilted her head, confused. 

"They're pajamas."

"I know what pajamas are, why are you wearing them?"

“Mr. LaRusso said we’re staying here tonight.”

 _Oh, like hell_. He hoisted himself up, using Miguel’s shoulder for balance as Daniel came out of the other bedroom, in a t-shirt and striped pajama pants, a toothbrush in hand. 

“Johnny, really, you’re doing me a favor.” He said. “The concierge is giving me a huge discount for being accommodating. And you're getting comped for the rooms, I checked, you just have to sign some paperwork when you go down to the lobby tomorrow.”

Johnny jerked his head towards the balcony, and LaRusso sighed, following him outside.

He slid the glass door shut behind them harder than was necessary, and took his burger out of the wax paper as he leaned against the railing. “I don’t need your charity. I can find my dojo it's own rooms."

“It’s not charity, I told you–”

“Like you need a discount on this place, Mr. Elite Gold Whatever.” He took a savage bite of the burger and immediately wished he hadn’t; now his mouth was too full to argue. 

“Look, don’t you want the kids to get a good start tomorrow?” Daniel leaned against the railing too, so they were face-to-face. “It’s getting late, by the time you find a new hotel with open rooms they’ll only get a few hours of sleep before the competition."

Johnny looked away, out at the city lights twinkling, swallowing his burger. It _would_ be nice to save some money. He'd wanted to buy a few more stand-up punching bags for the dojo. Still, LaRusso didn't need to know that. He didn't want him thinking he could make all these decisions, like Johnny was weak, like Miguel and Aisha were _his_ , like Robby– "Don't pull shit like this behind my back again."

"You were unconscious!" Daniel exclaimed. Johnny fixed him with a hard look, and he nodded, turning to curl both hands around the railing. He took a deep, bracing breath of the briny night air. Loud rap music was playing from an open window a few floors beneath them. "Okay, so how do we want to do this? We can put the girls in Sam's room and set Robby and Miguel up on the cushions in the living room."

“I-” Sharing a room with LaRusso wasn't exactly on his Christmas list. On the other hand, he _really_ didn’t want to sleep on that too-small couch again, his back was already in knots after his nap. “I thought you wanted Miyagi-Do well rested,” he finished lamely.

Daniel smirked, slid the glass door back open. “Eh, we both get one of each. Level the playing field.”

“It’d take more than that to bring my kids down to your level,” Johnny said. He walked by the counter, where Robby was still moving his sushi leftovers around with a fork.

He slipped the fries into his kid's hand the second LaRusso’s back turned to go brush his teeth. Robby pushed away the container of fish food away like it was on fire and shoved a handful of salty, greasy goodness in his mouth. Johnny smiled. Little victories.

* * *

“Sure you don’t want to sleep in the bathtub?” Johnny called a LaRusso finished up in the bathroom. He fought the urge to rub his arms. He always slept in his boxers and whatever t-shirt he'd been wearing that day, so he didn’t pack anything else for bed.

He regretted that, now; his Van Halen t-shirt and bare legs made him feel strangely exposed, even under the covers.

Daniel threw his toiletries back in a little leather pouch on the nightstand, and squirted expensive-looking lotion into his palm, rubbing it over his cheeks and forehead. _Of course he has some kind of girl routine, how else did he still look twenty?_ “I’ll pass, thanks.” 

He lifted the covers on the other side of the bed and Johnny sat bolt upright. “What are you doing?”

“Boiling an egg. What does it look like I’m doing?”

Johnny ground his jaw and pointed to the foot of the mattress. “Can’t you, y’know, put your head on the other end?”

It’s not like he’s never shared a bed with a guy before. When he came up this way for Jimmy’s wedding, he was in his twenties and somehow more broke than he was now. He and Bobby slept in the same crappy motel queen the entire three-day weekend. It had actually been a blast. Watching _Road House_ on TV, drinking too much, laughing over stupid shit as if they were still kids at a sleepover.

But that was Bobby, who loved him and trusted him and definitely wouldn’t try to punch him in the throat while he slept. They were like brothers. This...was just weird.

“Jesus, Johnny. You flip around, if you’re so insecure.”

“I’m not insecure. And I was here first.”

“Then just go to sleep!”

LaRusso got under the sheets next to him – leaving a respectable six inches of space – and turned off the lamp above his nightstand. Johnny lay back down, cautiously. For a minute neither of them spoke. He noticed a thick stripe of light falling across the comforter; the bedroom door was partially open, providing a perfect angle for LaRusso to watch the living room.

“No one’s getting pregnant tonight, huh?” he cracked.

LaRusso turned on his side. “Just...keeping an eye out.”

He didn't know if they'd ever been this close without hitting each other. "...I'm glad the kids ate. Even if it was disgusting ocean garbage."

"They _enjoyed_ it," Daniel said. Johnny wondered if Robby had wolfed down the rest of the fries yet. 

They went quiet again, in the darkness. It’d been a long time since Johnny lay in bed with someone breathing next to him, the sheets warm with another person’s body heat. Usually he just drank until he could pass out without thinking about the future of his dojo or his life or how when he stretched his arm across the bed, there was only cold space.

Daniel settled, eyelashes resting long and dark against his cheeks. He breathed like someone for who sleep was a guarantee, his knee pulled up towards his chest, completely at peace on this mattress four hundred miles from home.

The sight of it put Johnny out again faster than he’d like to admit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) it is one of my dearest headcanons that Robby inherited the Lawrence trait for being just a ridiculously picky eater and he spends most of his time with Daniel trying to hide it  
> 2) this is the [song the title comes from](https://open.spotify.com/track/5RRWirYSE08FPKD6Mx4v0V?si=ZD19TtyORGe5dbC2yl4U3A)


	3. Chapter 3

Johnny woke up too hot. 

He also woke up on his stomach, legs tangled in sheets, face smashed into the pillow; nothing new on that front, he’s always been a hard sleeper. But the heat…

Had he spiked a fever in his sleep, that stupid headache a precursor to actual illness? But even as he cursed the thought under his breath, his groggy brain started to organize the reality around him.

LaRusso’s cheek pressed against Johnny’s shoulder, the top of his head tilted into the curve of his neck like the hook of a puzzle piece. He’d reclaimed all the space between them in the night; the side of his white t-shirt rode up a little, exposing an inch of tan, soft skin, leaning into Johnny’s side.

Not fever. Body heat. Skin touching at too many places. _Warm. Nice._ Some base, sleepy, animalistic corner of Johnny’s brain decided.

The rest of him stiffened, like he'd walked in on something indecent. The feeling of LaRusso's breath on his shirt sent him so off-kilter it took him another moment to realize that wasn't what woke him. The black hotel phone was ringing, loud and shrill, on his nightstand. Glowing green numbers on the alarm clock beside it read 7:01 AM. The wake-up call for getting the kids up, _fuck._

Daniel yawned, turned his head in his half-sleep. His lips brushed against the skin of Johnny’s arm. 

Something dropped like a wet stone in his stomach, and he pawed aggressively at the phone, missing a few times before getting it to his ear. 

“Yeah,” he managed.

“ _Hello Mr. LaRusso!”_ A woman’s voice, far too chirpy for the hour and her occupation. _“This is the front desk with your seven AM wake-up call_ –”

“Great, thanks,” Johnny hung up with more force than was necessary. Daniel yawned again, dark eyes opening. When they flicked up to meet Johnny's – and noticed they were only a few inches away – his face scrunched up.

“God, sorry.” He pushed himself onto his elbows and leaned away, opening up enough space between them that Johnny could breathe again. “Habit.”

Right, LaRusso was married. Probably thought he was all up on his wife. A fleeting anger shot through Johnny at the thought, that the shrimp from high school somehow grew up to get a babe like Amanda in his bed every day, that he’s probably had more morning sex in the past year than Johnny’s had in his entire life. 

That he was just lying there, sleepy and open and not even embarrassed for reaching out for someone in the dark. 

“Whatever,” Johnny said. He tells himself he should just consider himself lucky he didn’t have to deal with LaRusso’s hard-on. “You got coffee anywhere in these fancy digs?”

He ends up wishing he’d set a call for six instead. First Aisha can’t find the top of her _gi_ , then Robby’s hair somehow gets caught in the zipper of his duffel bag. Daniel is pissy over the room’s coffee, saying it tastes “worse than instant”, and that's before he and Sam get into a five minute argument about the appropriateness of her wearing eyeliner to the tournament. 

“Thanks for being the rock, kid,” he tells Miguel as he ties up his sneakers. 

“Sensei, I can't find my AirPods charger,” he says, eyes flicking suspiciously across the room at Robby. "I saved up for them all summer."

Jesus suffering Christ. “Why are you charging your inhaler? I thought I told you to stop with that crap.”

Thick gray fog rolled in and filled the streets. They got to the civics center and signed in – _Ages 14 -18, Advanced_ – with eight minutes to spare. The Cobra Kai kids look bad-ass. Sam and Robby look about as menacing as toddlers. Sam’s long, bouncy ponytail was even tied up with a matching white ribbon. 

“...and Samantha LaRusso, from Miyagi-Do in Encino. There you go! We were afraid you weren’t going to make it. Oh, excuse me,” The woman working sign-ins said, banging her wrist against Daniel’s as she handed him a pen.

“It’s fine, he can take it,” Johnny cracked, on reflex. 

Her face brightened. “You two know each other?”

They exchanged a glance. The idea that legend of their rivalry hadn’t made its way out of the San Fernando Valley painted such a vibrant look of disbelief across Daniel’s face Johnny actually chuckled, involuntary and high.

“Yeah, you could say that,” he managed.

The arena was broken up into quarters for the preliminaries, long blue curtains hanging down from the ceiling. Johnny shook off the morning, got a cheap beer from concessions and a pack of peanut M&Ms from a vending machine he only had to kick a little. For the next two hours his focus whittled down to the Cobra Kai matches, walking back and forth between the portioned off sections of the room, wishing he’d thought to keep his sneakers on like some of the other senseis. 

He’d been working with Aisha on keeping her guard up around her midsection, and she sailed through her first two matches with only one point lost. Miguel was getting too flashy; he kicked off on the ball of his right foot and _flipped,_ barely missing a jab to his chest.

“Hey! Mr. Diaz!” he said, pulling him off to the side of his mat. “Rein it in. This isn’t gymnastics.”

Miguel just grinned. “Still won, Sensei. Just did it with style.”

“Stay on your feet,” Johnny rolled his eyes. Miguel listened to him for approximately one more match before he started hamming it up again. He had to admit it was fun to watch; the kid had a handle on spinning kicks in a way he hadn’t seen since _Dutch_. Every teenage boy wants to be Jackie Chan. 

As winners in the different brackets emerged (DIAZ, ROBINSON) and the number of competitors narrowed, the blue nets were rolled back into the rafters. Johnny sat down on the first row of the bleachers. KEENE and LARUSSO were still on the board. 

“Looks like we might end up going toe-to-toe again.” Daniel sat down next to him, eyes tracking the groups breaking down into octo-finals. He had a plastic bento box in his lap; Johnny could smell something pungent through the container.

“You tryin’ to grow gills or something?” 

“I needed lunch,” he shrugged, taking chopsticks out of their paper sleeve and breaking them in two. “Not all of us enjoy eating like we're in a hospital waiting room.”

"Hey, show me the hospital that sells beer, and I might actually get health insurance." Johnny turned his attention back to the kids. Robby was up against a sixteen-year-old girl from a Mountain View dojo. She was _built,_ shoulders as broad as his. Maybe he should incorporate more weight training with the kids when he got back.

“I was thinking about that too,” Daniel said, shoving a chunk of rice in his mouth, and Johnny realized he’d spoken out loud. “Robby got a lot of strength training when we were setting up Miyagi-Do, but I think it’s gone a little by the wayside.”

“Oh, come on, trimming bonanzas makes you _so_ buff."

"They're _bonsais_." Robby landed a kick on his opponent's hip, and Johnny made a tiny fist in victory when the ref awarded him a point. "Yes! Way to go, Rob..." Daniel’s smile faded from his face, and Johnny followed his gaze. 

Mountain View Girl aimed a crescent kick, and Robby was on his back, eyes wide, disoriented.

“Did she get his head?” Johnny asked.

“I– she missed him,” Daniel sounded perplexed. 

“What?”

“She didn’t make contact, why did he…” He made to walk onto the mat in front of them for a better look, but as soon as he stood, his legs buckled, head lurching forward. Johnny reached out and grabbed his wrist. On the mat, Mountain View Girl fell on her ass too. She wasn’t the only one; the room was shaking.

“All participants please hold,” a man’s voice came through a speaker somewhere nearby, lips bumping against the microphone in his haste. “We seem to be experiencing an earthquake.”

Johnny was nothing if not a child of California; _Drop, cover, and hold on,_ echoed in his head, the long ago instructions of a firefighter that came to visit his kindergarten class. He tightened his grip around LaRusso’s wrist, yanked them both back down on the bench hard enough that his joints popped. Too far from any table or doorway to hide under, so he just ducked his head between his knees, pushed Daniel’s down too.

The room got strangely quiet and loud at the same time, lightbulbs rattling, bags and water bottles slipping through the spaces in the bleachers. Two, three trophies fell off the table and shattered into golden shards. Johnny squeezed his eyes shut.

Scientists later declared the earthquake a 5.1 on the Richter scale – the worst of the minor quakes. Enough to break down the facades on some of the Bay Area’s shittier buildings, knock over lamps and cause a few cars to run off the road. No one dies, and the worst recorded injury in the city is a concussion and two broken ribs.

But everyone feels it.

It lasted three and a half minutes. Johnny didn’t take his hand off the back of Daniel’s neck the entire time.

When things stilled, he lifted his head, clocking Miguel up against a far wall, hanging onto the handle of a storage room door. Robby was still on his back, until the Mountain View girl reached down and helped him up.

“Johnny? John, get off me, I need to find Sam,” Daniel jerked out of his grip and Johnny quickly shoved his fist into his pocket, watching as LaRusso took off across the room. 

Sam was fine, save for her perfect ponytail looking a little squashed. Johnny’s eyes swept the room again and again. He wished everyone would stop moving around, panicking. He couldn't see Aisha. When his gaze landed on a circle of adults, standing in the middle of a mat, his heart sank.

He pushed through a medic, a referee, a pale teenage boy in a _gi_. Aisha sat on the floor, clutching her wrist. Johnny’d seen enough injuries to tell it was busted before the medic said a word.

“He fell on me,” Aisha said, blinking back tears. “When it started.”

“It was an accident.” The boy looked terrified. “I didn’t mean to, I lost my balance.”

Johnny got down onto the floor next to her, sat criss-cross. “Alright, no tears, Miss Robinson.” Brisk, businesslike. If he babied her, it’d just make everyone freak out more. “Let’s see what the damage is.”

He bit down on the side of his tongue to keep from wincing; broken at an angle, purple and green bruises already starting to bloom. Very gently, he turned her arm over, looked up at the medic. 

“You got an ice wrap?” To Aisha– “This is nothing, just looks ugly as shit.”

She chuckled wetly, still trying to breathe evenly. “I’m sorry, Sensei, I don’t think I can keep going.”

Kreese would’ve made him play through the pain; he had, a few times, won on sprained ankles and broken fingers. God knows LaRusso had kicked his ass with a notably fucked up knee.

“Don’t apologize to me,” he said. “Apologize to this loser that he has to wait until next year for his ass-beating.”

“Okay sir, let’s keep it clean,” the referee said. Johnny helped Aisha up and leaned into the other kid. 

“Watching you, punk.”

“Sir!”

Aisha laughed. 

Johnny released her to the medic. LaRusso stood just outside the circle, staring at him with an unreadable expression.

“What?” 

“Nothing, you…” Daniel shook his head. “Nothing.”

The aftershocks passed. The medic set Aisha’s wrist and wrapped it up while everyone else tried to get the tournament back on track. Nobody was sure how many points were scored through fighting and how many were the force of tectonic plates, so they just restarted the last round. 

“Can you keep an eye on Diaz?” Johnny asked. “The doctor chick said I should take Miss Robinson to the hotel and give her pills.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they said it just like that,” Daniel said. 

“Are you gonna help or not?”

“Yeah. I got him.” Daniel looked up at him. "Least I can do, after you valiantly protected me from falling lightbulbs."

“Screw you, LaRusso,” he said, but he found himself smiling as he and Aisha took the front steps of the center two at a time. It was starting to rain.


	4. Chapter 4

Johnny was relieved to remember Aisha was sixteen and fully capable of taking painkillers on her own, without bitching. He sat out on the balcony and drank a couple White Claws while she curled up on the couch, watching some God-awful rom-com he remembered Shan loved when they were dating. 

“Is that pay-per-view?” Johnny called over his shoulder.

Aisha paused. “Maybe?”

“Good girl.” LaRusso’d make that stupid face like a pissed-off mouse when he saw the bill. Priceless.

It was two in the afternoon, or maybe three? Wind blew rain droplets onto his face and hands, but he didn’t mind. The view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the green slopes of Marin Headlands behind it, was pretty sweet. He was even coming around on the White Claw. 

A memory of Laura rolling his stroller fast down the hill outside the Painted Ladies bubbled to the surface of his mind. “ _Up, up, up...”_ she’d chant as she pushed them to the apex of the street. He was four, maybe, a little too old to actually need a stroller, but they were strapped for both cash and entertainment at that point. She’d grip the handles tight, start pushing, and yell “ _Down down down!_ ” while they built momentum and Johnny shrieked with laughter.

He wondered what she’d think of him back here, in this city with his own kid. Kids, really. He did that about once a week, in the decade and a half since Robby was born. Tried to see his life through her eyes. _What would Laura say about this failure, what would Laura say this stupid fucking decision._

The swooping gut-punch of shame didn’t come. 

The door to the suite slammed, hard enough to shake the frame.

“Jesus, you know there was just an earthquake, right?” Johnny turned around. He didn’t trust the hippie contractors up here to build structurally sound buildings. “Whoa!”

Miguel tackled Robby to the floor, baring his teeth like a wild animal. Robby hooked his foot around Miguel’s ankle and flipped them over. 

“Robby, Jesus!” Daniel ripped him off of Miguel, holding him back by the arms. Miguel did a kip up and aimed a punch at Robby’s exposed face. Johnny raced in, swept his ankle and knocked him back down before he could make contact.

“What the hell is the matter with you two?”

“Diaz thinks he can cheat his way through everything!” Robby spit. His face was red and his eyes were dark and manic. _Is that what I look like when I’m mad?_

“Enough!” Daniel snapped. He frog-marched Robby into his and Johnny’s room and closed the door. Even in a room this nice, there wasn’t a lot of space. Johnny looked down at Miguel, glowering on the floor. 

“Diaz, take a walk.”

“But I–”

 _"Take a walk_.”

He stormed out of the room. 

Johnny looked up at LaRusso. He was vaguely aware Aisha was still sitting stunned on the couch, Sandra Bullock playing on TV in front of them. 

“What the hell happened?”

“They reset the matches after the quake,” Sam, who’d come in behind the chaos as some point, said breathlessly. “And Miguel shouldn’t have won his. We all know it, the last hit was fair, he didn’t defend his side, but when they started all over he _did_ win and went onto the next round and then he–”

“Then he beat Robby,” Daniel said, rubbing his forehead. “Again.”

“Illegally,” Sam said.

“ _Samantha,"_ her father shot her a warning look. 

Johnny crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s nothing illegal about winning a fresh match. Don’t teach my kid to be a sore loser, LaRusso.”

“I knew it! I knew you’d take his fucking side!” Robby banged out of the bedroom like a bat out of hell. He shoved Johnny hard enough that he actually moved him. “You love coming in and pretending to be my dad for ten minutes a day, but it’s all bullshit!”

“Robby–” Robby smacked his hand away and left the room too, still in his _gi_.

“Great. Way to go, Johnny.” 

“How is this my fault? I wasn’t even there.”

“Idiot.” Daniel walked into the hallway. Johnny was on his heels without a backward glance to Sam and Aisha. There was no sign of either of the boys in the hall. 

“Those little fuckers can _move,_ ” Johnny said. Daniel didn’t crack a smile. “Oh come on, now you’re gonna act like a little bitch too? You’re not one to look down on cheating.”

Daniel pushed him against the wall with his forearm. “Did you hear me say Miguel cheated _once_ in there? Did you even hear me use that word?”

Johnny could’ve thrown LaRusso off if he wanted to, but he was so stunned he just stood there. Daniel clicked his tongue, looked down the empty hall.

“I’m not mad that Robby lost. I’m mad that he still flies to that ‘strike first’ aggression shit no matter how hard I try to teach him better–”

“Oh, right, because everything bad he does is my fault and everything good is something you’ve pulled off with your magic Miyagi bullshit.” Johnny spat, and did shove him off. “Y’know, he’s not one of the junkers that you fix up and paint over and pretend is a whole new car. He’s a screwed up kid who gets pissed off and stupid. That’s what kids _do,_ no matter how much you make them meditate. That’s what _you_ did!”

Daniel swallowed, put his hands on his hips. Johnny blinked. He thinks he may have just won an argument. 

“Not me, I was a real measured teenager, but–”

“Don’t push it,” Daniel said, turning in a circle, as if the boys were hiding just behind him. “Do you have your phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’m going to take the elevator to the lobby, see if I can catch them. You check the stairwells. Call me if you find one.” He exhaled hard out of his nose. “You know what’s stupid? Miguel got knocked out the round after Robby anyway. He was flipping all over the place, really showing–”

“–off too much!” Johnny finished. “I know! I told him to knock it off! Left him totally exposed.”

LaRusso nodded, a tiny, tired jerk. “Sam’s the only one still in the game for the quarter-finals tomorrow.”

Johnny heard a high, involuntary laugh come out of his own mouth. “You LaRussos are unkillable.” 

Neither of them found Robby or Miguel in the stairwells, the lobby, the gym, pool, or business center. A call up to Sam confirmed they’d both left their phones in the room.

“Fuck,” Johnny said, as he and LaRusso stood outside the entrance to the Laurel, looking out at the gray day. It was going to get dark soon. “Kids today don’t know how to find their own asses without their phones.”

“We’re in a very safe area,” Daniel said. It sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than Johnny. “Let’s check the coffee shops and restaurants on this block, they can’t have gotten far.”

Aquatic Park was still hopping, even in the shitty weather. They wound past an enthusiastic drum circle, a woman who could not more clearly be on acid dancing in circles, waving long red ribbons. Two slim figures walked by, huddled under an umbrella, and Daniel caught a flash of dark hair and a black, sleeveless shirt. 

“Miguel?” He tapped a shoulder. “Oh, sorry.” It was two young men, early twenties at the oldest, red, chapped hands laced together. “I thought you were someone else. We lost track of one of our teenagers.”

“Oh no!” One of the men exclaimed. He had a high, campy voice that inwardly made Johnny cringe. There was something that terrified him about the idea of being a target every time you opened your mouth. “Well, good luck finding him.”

“Yeah, and thanks for mistaking him for a teenager!” The other one said. He ruffled his boyfriend's hair. “He’s gonna be bragging about that for awhile.”

“Evan, shut up,” he laughed, dipping his head against Evan's neck, and they continued on their way.

“Well, that was very impressive,” Daniel said, once the couple was out of earshot. “All that PDA, and you didn’t even flinch.”

Johnny stared at him like he’s stupid. “You know I’ve lived in California twenty years longer than you ever will, right?”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “ _Seventeen._ ”

Johnny waved this math off, stared out down the winding sidewalk paths for a moment. “I was born up here. Over at St. Francis. I’ve _forgotten_ more homos than you’ll ever meet.”

“No kidding.” This actually did surprise Daniel, Johnny could tell by his face. He gets it, knows what he looks like. Everything about him seems so perfectly SoCal, like he was created from surfboard wax and Beach Boys songs.

He shrugged. “My mom– she was really young when she had me, like nineteen. She was living in Haight-Ashbury, trying to be a dancer, an artist, all that shit. It was just the two of us up here until I was five.”

Before Sid, before Laura moved them six hours south because she wanted Johnny to go to school somewhere nice, before she gave up any semblance of happiness in exchange for safety.

They lived in a tiny studio apartment above an Irish pub where she waitressed for reduced rent. It was a piece of shit, even worse than the place he had now, but she sewed white curtains that fluttered in the breeze and played him all her favorite records.

She’d have dinner parties she called Pauper’s Feasts where all her artist friends brought over apples or pasta or whatever food they had in the house. He spent the first five years of his life watching bull dykes and drag queens drink wine and argue about politics and pass Johnny around like their favorite toy.

“That sounds really nice,” Daniel said, not unkindly. Johnny nodded. He needed to stop thinking about his mom. More than a minute, and an unacceptable lump formed in his throat. 

“Yeah. So I’m not a dickhead to random gay kids, LaRusso.”

Daniel opened his mouth to argue this, and then shut it. _Lawrence 2-0,_ tonight.

They left the park, passed the shuttered tourist shops opposite Fisherman's Wharf, rounded the corner by Boudin Bakery. Johnny seriously considered buying a loaf of bread shaped like a turtle; his stomach was growling.

“Come on, are you ten?” Daniel asked. “Oh right, you just eat like you are.”

Johnny flipped him off. “Hey, there a burger place near here?”

“Johnny, I was joking, we can’t get dinner right now.”

“It’s for Robby, moron. He hates all that froofy artisanal crap, he probably got hungry and ended up in one.”

Daniel shook his head. “I don’t think he brought any money with him, he was still in his _gi._ ”

“When has that ever stopped him?”

Even as they walked inland, away from the Wharf, there were still half a dozen McDonald’s and In-N-Outs to search. No Robby. 

Daniel stopped at a convenience store to use the bathroom. Johnny bought a forty while he waited, and offered it to Daniel after he slugged back a third of it. 

“You ever consider getting help?” Daniel asked. 

“Nah, I can finish it by myself. I was just being polite.”

Daniel held up his phone. “Well, good news, Sam texted. Miguel came back to the hotel. Now he’s demanding Robby sleep in the bathtub, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

In a Pret a Manger across the street from Peter and Paul Church, the cashier recognized the picture of Robby on Daniel's phone.

"Oh, that kid was getting booked by the cops when I came in for my shift," she said.

All the blood drained from Daniel's face. "What?"

The girl shrugged. She had purple streaks in her hair, which made Johnny irrationally angry. "I guess my manager caught him stealing a sandwich? I don't know, they were leaving when I got here."

"Do you know what precinct they were taking him to?" Daniel asked, leaning over the counter and far too close to the girl's face.

She raised a pierced eyebrow. "Sir, I just work here."

They crossed the street to the church while Daniel called Information. He was trying to hide it, but he'd started to limp from too much walking. His knee clicked as they sat down on the white stone steps. "Hi, if someone was arrested near, um, Washington Square, where would they be taken? No. Well, he didn't call me. Because he was born in 2002 and doesn't know anyone's number!" 

Johnny handed him the 40. _Drink,_ he mouthed, and took the phone out of his hand. "Look, my son was being a punk, he's seventeen, I just need to know where they probably took him. Can you connect me to Central Booking? Thanks." He wedged Daniel's phone in between his ear and shoulder. "She's transferring me." 

"Oh, you never let them put you on hold!" Daniel took a big gulp of the malt liquor, winced. Then he took another. And another.

"Transferring is not the same as hold." A tinny version of a Britney Spears song blasted in his ear. Okay, _that_ was hold.

They sat for another few minutes in silence, Daniel continuing to destroy the 40, too fast on an empty stomach. No one stopped and gave them a hard time about drinking at 4:30 PM outside a church. The booze wasn't even in a paper bag. Maybe Laura had been right to get Johnny out of here.

“Look, they have him in custody. He's not gonna do something crazy,” Johnny said. 

"Crazier then get arrested for stealing bread?" Daniel hiccuped. "We're here for three days!"

“Well, it's not like he went into the Tenderloin and bought meth. That's something.”

“I’m really glad you think this is funny.”

“I don’t. I’m just...regrouping.” He reached to take the bottle back, but Daniel jerked it away. 

“'m not finished.” He took another drink. "You're right, I'm not helping Robby. I'm just another person letting him down."

Johnny rubbed the back of his neck. He knew he was supposed to say something snarky, a jab for LaRusso to take on. But all his drinks dulled his sharp edges, made him quiet and soft. He was afraid if he opened his mouth, something weird and mushy and kind of queer might come out. So he knocked his shoulder against LaRusso's, then did the same with his knee.

Daniel looked up at the grand dual spires above them. “Y’know, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio got fake married here.”

“What?”

“He was divorced from some other lady, so the Catholics wouldn’t let them get married inside. We’re tricky that way. So they took all the wedding pictures on these steps–” Daniel slapped the one he was sitting on twice with his open palm. “–and pretended it happened here for the sake of his family.”

Johnny realized if he didn't actually back away, he wasn't nudging LaRusso. He was just leaning against him, like they had in bed that morning. He didn't feel the need to move. He might've overdone it on the White Claws. “Why the hell do you even know that?”

“You’re not the only one whose spent time in San Francisco.” Daniel finished off the bottle, set the empty in the space under his legs. 

“Yeah? You and Amanda come up here to go clubbing?” 

“For the _culture_." He touched the rim of the bottle with his finger, weighing something in his mind. "...the gay bars aren't really her scene, though.”

Johnny did lean away, then. "And they're yours?"

Daniel actually smiled, pleased he'd ruffled Johnny's feathers. “We got one of those–” he made his hands flat and held them in front of him, the gibberish sign language of people on the spacey side of tipsy. “–open marriages. When we go on romantic weekend vacations, sometimes we stay together, sometimes we…have adventures elsewhere for the night.”

"Are you screwing with me?" 

"Nope," Daniel popped the _p,_ and Johnny felt the familiar urge to strangle him rise up. Fucking LaRusso, so comfortable in his own skin, in a smug way that made everyone else's around him – made _Johnny's_ – feel rough and too tight in comparison. 

“Didn’t know you swung that way,” he managed. Had Daniel _liked_ sharing a bed with him, using Johnny as the world's grumpiest body pillow?

Daniel raised his eyebrows. "Well, y'know, didn't seem like a great time to bring it up when you were throwing me off a cliff." 

Johnny swallowed. "It wasn't a cliff. It was a _hill_."

"Ohhh, Johnny Lawrence is getting _uncomfortable_ ," LaRusso said in a sotto voice. "I thought you'd seen it all, Mr. Haight-Ashbury." 

"I'm not. I have. I–"

The hold music stopped. A different woman was on the line, saying she was with Central Police Station, did they need to be transferred to Youth Services?

" _Yes_ ," Johnny said, far too emphatically. He'd never been so relieved to talk to a cop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I SWEAR THEY WILL BONE SOON  
> 2) If you ever get a chance to visit Saints Peter and Paul Church, I recommend it, [it's honestly gorgeous.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saints_Peter_and_Paul_Church,_San_Francisco,_California.jpg)


	5. Chapter 5

NAME, _Robert Swayze Keene_ , DOB, _February 4th, 2002_. HAIR, _dark blonde_. EYES, _green._

Between being Robby’s actual father and the booze leaving Daniel a smidge too buzzed to deal with the intake desk, Johnny was the one up to his ass in forms and being told to “hang tight”. The drizzling outside had made his t-shirt cling uncomfortably to his stomach, feet freezing in his flip-flops. _Focus._

He hesitated over the height, identifying marks. He wasn’t even sure if the kid left the Laurel wearing shoes.

“And you’re his fathers?” The woman asked, again. She already scanned his license, but kept holding it, staring like she couldn’t comprehend why he had a different last name. _Jesus Christ, they’re going to call CPS._

"I am," Johnny managed to nod.

“Okay, hang tight,” she pushed her rolling chair back from the desk and wandered into another room. Taking her sweet time, in Johnny’s opinion.

Daniel leaned his shoulder against the bulletproof glass. He was starting to look dehydrated. “Do you–do _I_ need to get money for bail, or anything?” 

Johnny let the little jab slide, trying to remember the zip code of Shannon’s address, which was still technically Robby’s house. “I don’t think so. Depends on if they’re pressing charges.” 

“I should’ve never let him run off like that.” Daniel shook his head.

“Dude, knock it off,” Johnny said. “How many times do I have to tell you this shit happens? You’re not letting him down. He’d be a drop-out if he hadn’t found you.”

“Great, he can have a criminal record, but at least he’s passing the 11th grade.”

“I liked you better when you were drunk and talking about gay shit,” Johnny snapped, and Daniel actually reared his head back, eyes big, like he thought Johnny hadn’t been listening.

The policewoman came back. “Your son is being held in protective custody downstairs. It took us a while to contact the franchise’s owner, and he has elected not to press charges. So just finish these forms, we can release him to you.”

“That’s it?” Daniel said, straightening up.

Johnny pumped his fist, tiny and tight next to his hip, so the woman wouldn’t see. “That’s it.”

Robby came out wearing foam flip-flops, which Johnny hoped some lesbo social worker had given him and he hadn't had to barter or fight for. The bruise on his face was starting to turn from red to purple, and he wasn't sure if it was from Miguel or not.

“How did you find me?” he asked quietly. 

“I went old school, used my phone as a phone. You should try it sometime.” Johnny said. “Come on, let’s go.”

He held open the front door of the station, and nudged Robby through. Without thinking, he put his hand on the small of LaRusso’s back to move him too. Daniel raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. 

They were out on the street before Robby spoke again, turning his back to Johnny and looking up at Daniel. “Mr. LaRusso, I’m sorry. For all of it, I didn’t mean to lose control like that, or be that stupid in the store, I...I’m sorry.”

He locked his knees and shoulders. Expecting Daniel to yell at him again, cut him out of his life again, and for a second Johnny hated LaRusso like he hadn't since he was seventeen. His fists curled against his legs.

Daniel let out one of his meditation breaths that seems to last a full year. “...I’m just glad you’re safe.” 

Robby’s shoulders dropped an inch. Johnny released his hands.

“You’re apologizing to Miguel when we get back,” he added, and Robby rolled his eyes. “Hey, I saw that. Are you hungry?”

“I dunno…” He said. Johnny caught Daniel’s eye over his head. 

Daniel sighed. “You want pizza?”

Robby inhaled four slices before they ended up just buying an entire pie, then another to bring back to the rest of the kids. Johnny made Daniel hold the boxes as they walked through Russian Hill; the steep, hairpin turns of Lombard Street were ahead, and he kind of wanted to see if he could make LaRusso lose his famous balance and drop them down the hill.

“You know, your grandma loved this neighborhood. I have about fifty polaroids she took of it back in my apartment.”

Robby frowned, eyebrows crinkling together. “My grandma lives in Ohio.”

“Not Shan’s mom, _my_ mom.” He doesn’t think he’s ever mentioned her to his son before. She’d died seven months before he was born. "Laura."

“Oh.” Robby digested this. Daniel stumbled on the steep incline.

“Goddammit. You carry these, I'm the one who bought them.” He foisted the boxes off on Johnny and his son. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear,” Robby said. Daniel rubbed his face with both hands. When he put them down, he’s looking at Johnny. 

“I’ve been keeping bad company this weekend.”

When they got back to the suite, Johnny sat at the kitchenette counter with Sam and Aisha, eating a slice and holding the rest of the pizza hostage while Robby and Miguel faced off in the middle of the living room.

“I don’t care if he’s sorry, I’m not staying in here with him,” Miguel said. 

“I’m the one whose actually supposed to be in here,” Robby retorted. “Go sleep in the bathtub if you’re so pissed off.”

“ _You_ sleep in the bathtub!”

“No one is sleeping in the bathtub!” Daniel exclaimed. He glanced over his shoulder at Johnny. “Is that a thing? Why do they keep suggesting it?”

Johnny pushed by him, hoisted up the coffee table with one arm, and turned it on its side. “Miguel, stay in this half of the room, Robby, that one. Either of you try any shit, I’m hanging you over the balcony Michael Jackson-style.” 

“When did Michael Jackson–” Sam started.

Johnny jabbed a finger at her. “LaRusso, you are on such thin ice, I swear to God.”

Miguel and Robby sized each other up for a long moment. High noon at the OK Corral. Then, glaring, they both sat down on the carpet on their respective sides of the barrier. 

“Eat your dinners and shut up,” Johnny said.

“And get to bed soon. All of you. Sam’s got a big day tomorrow,” Daniel said. He flipped open the pizza box and took a slice for himself, dabbing the grease off with a paper towel.

After they ate, Johnny wanted to collapse in bed, but Daniel beat him to it. Sprawled out on top of the covers, he pulled his shoes off with his heels, still in his stupid track pants and expensive blue hoodie. As soon as Johnny swung the door half-closed – leaving the standard six inches – LaRusso burst out laughing.

“I _cannot_ believe that worked.”

“Line in the sand, man. Primitive shit.” Johnny shoved his hands in the pockets of his sweats.

“Y’know, I’m an only child. Always wanted a big family,” LaRusso said. “Sometimes I wish that Amanda and I hadn’t stopped at two. Nights like this? Can’t believe we even had Anthony.”

“Yeah, that kid’s kind of a dud.” He blurted out. His body feels weird, off-balance. Being a dick is his automatic response.

LaRusso lifted his head. “Go fuck yourself, Johnny.”

“Yeah, you’d like to see that, wouldn’t you LaRusso?” He forced himself to stay cool, and flopped down on his back next to LaRusso, arm landing diagonal over his stomach, chest. 

Daniel cringed. “I’m never drinking around you again.”

“I told you, I don’t give a shit if you sometimes putt from the rough. Scrawny little punk like you’s gotta get laid somehow. Can't get many opportunities with a face like that.”

“What, you don't think I'm cute, Johnny? ” Daniel asked, in a stupid voice higher than his real one. "Don’t want to do me?"

Johnny shoved his stomach awkwardly with the arm draped across him. “No one says ‘do me’ anymore, LaRusso.”

“Right, I forgot you’re an expert on youth culture. What’s the website where you watch videos called again?”

Johnny sat up against the headboard. “What’s wrong with calling it The YouTube? It’s the _only_ YouTube. That's grammar shit.”

"Sure." Daniel sat up too, their shoulders brushing together. In the second bedroom, music played; Aisha and Sam, watching yet another TikTok dance video. Johnny listened hard, but no sounds of yelling or attempted murder came out of the living room.

He swallowed. “Thanks for being cool with Robby tonight. He really...having you in his corner means a lot to him.”

"Hey, you're the one who tracked him down." Daniel exhaled, long and slow. “We make a pretty good team, huh? Who knew.”

Johnny leaned over and kissed him, a hand sliding up the left side of his jaw. A light, swooping feeling rolled through the pit of his stomach. It wasn't that different from kissing a chick, just a little more evening stubble, a harder jaw. For a second LaRusso's chin lifted, kissing Johnny back.

Then he pulled away, hands in his lap like a dead fish.

“You don’t have to do that.”

Shit. Had he misread all the–he was so _stupid_.

“I’m gonna go get a beer,” he managed, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He could feel his face turning crimson as he stared out the dark window. _Stop it_ , the voice in his head snapped, the one that sounded a lot like Kreese. 

“No, John, I meant–” Daniel caught his wrist, but Johnny shook him off.

“It’s cool, I’m just really thirsty, I can’t deal with your seltzer crap anymore.”

Johnny strode out of the bedroom as fast as he could without looking like he was running. He heard Miguel faintly behind him, _you okay, Sensei?,_ but kept walking without a backwards glance. 

He ended up at the ice machine at the very end of the floor, pressed his forehead against the cold metal casing. Maybe he could just hang out here for the night, let the frigid air turn his skin damp and clammy.

What the fuck was wrong with him? Not only did he kiss LaRusso, _Daniel fucking LaRusso_ , he ran away like a little girl when he got rejected, instead of just standing there and taking whatever punch LaRusso could aim at him. That he _deserved_ for doing something so weird and pathetic.

_Does fear exist in this dojo? Does weakness? Are you a scared, wimpy, little bitch?_

He punched the side of the machine hard. Pain exploded through his fingers. “Fuck!”

“Stop it, I know you don’t have health insurance.” 

LaRusso stood in the hallway just outside the alcove. He was in his socks, arms crossed over his chest. Those dark eyes didn’t hold any pity, the gentle kindness of someone trying to let him down easy because they can see he’s already nothing but sharp, shattered edges. 

He just looks annoyed. Like LaRusso. 

“It’s fine,” Johnny said through gritted teeth. When he uncurled his fingers, they hurt so much he sucked in sharply, dark spots dancing in front of his eyes. 

“For the love of God. C'mere.” LaRusso, suddenly next to him, holding his palm up gingerly. He kneaded it with his thumb, warm and slowly. “Flex your fingers.”

Some kind of knot released under the skin. Fucking LaRusso and his magic Asian massage tricks. 

“It’s not broken,” Daniel said, pressing his fingers firmly against the fleshy heel of his hand. “Just gonna have a nasty bruise.”

He squeezed, and a delicious, tingling sensation ran through Johnny's entire hand, all the way to the tips of his fingers. A little hum rose in the back of his throat. He tilted his head, glared up at the ceiling. 

“Look at me,” LaRusso said. “I didn’t mean I didn’t like what happened, back there.”

“Stop,” Johnny said, but Daniel just held on tighter. 

“I just–You don't have to do that, if you don't want to. I was joking around, I wasn't, like, _expecting_ it of you.”

“I’m not a teenage girl, LaRusso,” he said. Even as he said it, the memory of the night he and Ali lost their virginity together surfaced. The way he stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed, staring up at the ceiling like this, fidgeting. Waiting for something to give. “I’m not worried you’ll take back your letterman jacket if I don’t…” _put out._ He can’t make himself say the words, for some reason. 

Daniel smirked. “I don't think any jacket I had in high school would've fit you.”

"LaRusso."

“Okay,” Daniel said. "Okay."

He felt the hand around his slip away. The whirring of the ice machine filled the silence.

“Fuck it,” Johnny bent his head and kissed LaRusso again. Hard, sloppy. He slammed his back up against the ice machine, the tender hand in his hair, the other snaking down to touch his back, ruck up his sweatshirt.

Daniel shifted his good knee between Johnny’s legs, rubbed it against his inner thigh. Opened his mouth a little wider to let Johnny’s tongue get in. _Holy shit._

“Mmm, mm, Johnny,” LaRusso pulled back again, but with his skull against the machine there was no room to run. Johnny’s nose still touched his. “We just got back from the police station. Let’s not get arrested for public indecency.”

“Right. Yeah.” He felt a little dazed, stupid. Took a step back, let Daniel out. They didn’t touch the entire walk back to the room. 

Nothing had changed. Johnny thought he might look different, or the world around him would. But Miguel and Robby still sat curled up on their sides of the Berlin Coffee Table, glaring at their phones. The door to the girls’ room was open, and Sam was painting Aisha’s nails while their awful music played.

As LaRusso set the key cards back on the entrance table, Johnny took out his own phone and stared at the screen without seeing, trying to look bored and casual as he made his way back to the bedroom.

He sat down on the edge of the mattress and dropped it on the carpet. His hands felt sweaty.

_Waiting for something to give._

Daniel came in, turned and leaned against the wall. Regarded Johnny. He was suddenly very aware of how his legs were spread, how thin his t-shirt was. How he wasn’t so much bigger than LaRusso, anymore.

_Do not give in to fear._

“Hey.”

Daniel closed the door, all the way. Locked it. 


	6. Chapter 6

When Johnny was thirteen, his biggest wish in life was to get his blue belt before anyone else in the U-14 class. His second biggest was to kiss Han Solo.

 _The Empire Strikes Back_ stayed in theaters for almost six months, and he and his friends saw it so many times they could mouth along with the dialog. Han Solo was _badass,_ could always shoot his way out of a fight, and keep that blinding smile on his face while doing it. Johnny knew the movie so well his stomach started to flip just in _anticipation_ of Harrison Ford walking on screen.

His hands started getting sweaty, slipping off the armrests, when he realized why that was happening.

He’d lie in bed at night and let his mind and hands wander and then berate himself that this shit had to stay secret.

He wasn’t a moron. He heard his mother on tearful phone calls to her old friends in San Francisco, what happened when they got caught with other guys. How they got sick. He knew the worst thing you could call someone in high school was _faggot_. Doing stuff with guys left you vulnerable to attack, and that was not the Cobra Kai way.

So he stuck with babes. With Ali, with Shan, with all the drunken hook-ups in between. It’s not like he didn’t enjoy it (when _Return of the Jedi_ came out a few years later and he saw Princess Leia in that metal bikini, he almost swallowed his tongue). Most importantly, it kept things simple, regulated the other urges to be just that. Urges, thoughts, something private, that belonged just to him and his brain.

And then Daniel LaRusso leaned over him in a bougie hotel room, put a hand on each knee to spread his legs wider, and Johnny wished he hadn’t waited until fifty to put theory into practice.

LaRusso’s got more training. He doesn’t like being on the defensive. At least he did end up getting his blue belt first.

“Put your hands on the bed,” Daniel said softly, and Johnny did, leaned back as his open palms sank into the mattress. It seemed like LaRusso might get on his knees, blow him. He could handle that.

Instead, he just _touched_ him. 

Slowly, torturously, he ran his hands down Johnny’s chest, fingers skimming lightly over his ribs. Warm, strong. Stroking his hips, moving down his inner thighs, then back up again. He kneaded the sensitive skin in big circles, like he’d done with Johnny’s hand. 

Bit by bit, Johnny’s body started to melt. He tucked his chin against his chest, so his eyes looked down to the carpet, and not Daniel's intense, soul-cracking gaze in front of him.

“S’okay,” LaRusso said softly. Being so _gentle,_ trying to relax him. Was it that obvious he’d never done this before? The thought made him itchy and embarrassed. Daniel rested a heavy hand on his crotch, stroked his dick through his sweatpants, and Johnny arched into his touch.

“Shit, LaRusso.”

“Can you not with that, right now? You call my daughter that, it’s just weird.”

“Daniel,” it sounded alien, coming out of his mouth. The look in LaR-Daniel’s eyes when he said it, though, made him power through. He leaned forward and kissed him again, tugged on his lower lip with his teeth. “Shit, _Daniel_.”

Daniel’s hands were on his chest, pushing him onto his back. The bed springs creaked, and they both froze for a second. No kids came out of the woodwork to catch them compromised. Johnny shifted up the mattress, dragging LaRusso on top of him. He was hard against Johnny’s leg, eyes getting heavy-lidded. Okay, okay. He could do this.

The track pants gave him easy access to slide his hand against the lower curve of LaRusso’s warm, tight stomach, under those designer briefs. He stroked his cock inexpertly, used to doing it from the other angle, but LaRusso didn’t seem to have any complaints. He let out a half-strangled moan, grabbed Johnny’s t-shirt and pulled him in close.

“Cover my mouth so they don’t hear,” he murmured. 

“Such a little freak,” Johnny whispered, but reached up, pressed his palm against LaRusso’s mouth. Then, just because he could, wrapped his legs around Daniel’s waist, squeezed, and rolled them over, so he was straddling LaRusso. 

He looked so _good_ down there, dark hair mussed, olive skin flushed and hot. Johnny felt a fleeting tug for something long ago, the wish he’d made a different choice the night he pushed LaRusso into the sand.

He grabbed the neck of his t-shirt with his free hand and tugged it off. LaRusso’s hands touched his stomach, fiddled with the buttons and zipper on his jeans, taking Johnny’s own cock out, stroking it to full-mast in his hands.

“Want something else to keep you quiet?” Johnny smirked. LaRusso licked his palm so he took his hand away.

“You’re a real comedian, you know that?” His Jersey accent got stronger when he was horny, it appeared. He licked a long strip down the length of Johnny’s dick, and he jolted forward, bracing his hands on either side of LaRusso’s shoulders.

Daniel craned his neck up, so his lips were next to Johnny’s ear, tickling the skin. “How about this? I blow you, then you get fucked.”

It took a second to understand the sentence. A flush bloomed on Johnny’s chest. “That one of those ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ riddles?”

LaRusso took him in his mouth, swirling his tongue around the head of his cock. He bucked involuntarily, and felt like an asshole when Daniel gagged a little. Less so when the dickhead dug sharp fingernails into his ass to keep him still. 

“Fuck.” He shifted closer, letting LaRusso hollow his cheeks, suck him down to the root. Warm, wet, dragging down his length with focused repetition. He ran a hand through that dark, soft hair. “Fuck, baby.”

LaRusso lightly scraped his teeth against his cock, and Johnny bit down on his own fist. He didn't know what was worse, the kids hearing the noises his body was making or the kids hearing him call LaRusso _baby._

 _Heat of the moment crap,_ he'd've told himself, if he was capable of thinking in words. Daniel hummed against his skin, and the vibration sent a well of pleasure rising up in him. His toes curled and too fast, he came in LaRusso’s mouth. 

“Shit, sorry."

But LaRusso swallowed like a champ – _see, that’s why you practice, Lawrence_ – holding his hip hard enough to bruise as he breathed through it. Johnny slumped boneless and heavy over him as he pulled off with a wet noise. 

“You good?” Daniel asked, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. Fucking _sexy_.

Johnny reached back and rubbed Daniel’s cock through his briefs, feeling it hard, straining. Unsteady, he pushed up onto his haunches, made quick, awkward work of peeling his and LaRusso’s pants and underwear down their thighs. He kissed a trail down Daniel’s neck while he did, smelled the faint scent of aftershave still lingering from that morning, mixed with clean sweat from walking halfway across San Francisco. Smelled like a _man_. 

That fact didn’t make Johnny feel skittish or stiff. He just wanted more.

Daniel got his hands on his shoulders and rocked them both up, into sitting, chin hooked on Johnny’s shoulder. “Let me– I need to grab–”

Reluctantly, he rolled off LaRusso, lay like molten lava on top of the sheets. Daniel took his expensive skin cream out of the bag on the dresser, unscrewed the lid. He slicked up his fingers. Johnny swallowed as Daniel crowded on top of him, caging him in with arms and legs.

“Go slow,” he muttered, through gritted teeth, like a fucking teenager. Maybe some part of him would always be that, around LaRusso.

LaRusso tried to keep it down too, whispering something so quietly Johnny knew he wasn’t making it out right. 

It couldn’t have been _I got you._

When his slender, cool finger pressed into Johnny, his eyes widened, and he turned his head into one of the six million stupid throws the hotel stacked on the bed. _Pillow biter._

He screwed his eyes closed as LaRusso pumped his finger in and out, then added a second. He couldn’t control the wanton gasp into the fabric.

“No one’s ever done this to you before, have they?” Daniel breathed against his neck, still screwing him with his index and middle. “Does it hurt?”

It stung, sure, but he wasn’t a baby. “S’fine.”

Daniel added a third finger and Johnny’s fists clenched white-knuckled around the comforter. The fingers stilled.

“You’re not ready for this, are you?”

Johnny lifted his head, found LaRusso hovering inches over his face. “Fuck you, man. I can take it.”

“Jesus, Johnny, it’s not about _taking it_ –”

His knees jumped, around LaRusso’s hips, and he reached down, grabbed Daniel’s cock roughly. “Shut up _,_ LaRusso.”

He started to jerk Daniel off, taking them both in hand. He was already one-and-done – it's not like he needed the reminder that he was no longer twenty – but the way Daniel’s pupils got blown at the sensation of their cocks rubbing together still felt pretty fucking sweet, even in his haze. His hips started grinding against Johnny’s.

His fingers hooked inside Johnny as his breathing became uneven, and Johnny felt his back arch. The fullness, the pressure; he'd never felt anything like it.

_No fear. No fear. Nofearnofearnofear–_

Daniel lined up his hips with the tip of his cock. He kneaded the tense muscles in his stomach with his knuckles. "Tell me if you need to stop."

"Shut _up_ , LaRusso."

"I told you," Daniel's hips snapped, pushing an inch inside Johnny in one burst, then deeper with the next. "To stop calling me that."

He started to move, shallow thrusts, letting Johnny get used to the feeling. He canted his hips up on instinct, trying to make the angle feel less overwhelming. Daniel braced a hand on the pillow above Johnny's head and began to pump into him in earnest. When his cock brushed up against _that spot_ inside of him, his toes curled, ankles crossed behind LaRusso's ass.

Daniel, so sensitive after all the hand stuff, didn't take very long to come, warm and sticky, Johnny clenched around him. He gasped into Johnny’s mouth as quietly as he could.

For a minute neither of them moved. Then LaRusso, still lying on top of him like the world's heaviest electric blanket, pulled out. Slow, so slow, _annoyingly_ slow, but Johnny still felt a little tender. He thumbed Daniel's ear to keep from wincing.

“Can't believe you thought I couldn't do it."

LaRusso lifted his head, chin on Johnny's chest. "I never said you _couldn't,_ I just–you know what? Fine. Let's see if you can actually come from it next time, tough guy."

Johnny decided he was just too tired to do anything but stare dumbly at that. 

LaRusso rolled off of him, lifted the covers so they could both get underneath the sheets. He settled back against Johnny’s side, under the crook of his arm. Johnny focused on his own breathing, filling his diaphragm, making his stomach rise and fall. 

“Seriously, you okay?” LaRusso asked. “I know the first time can feel a little...weird.”

“I'm thinking about Okinawan karate.”

Daniel actually sat up, hand balancing on Johnny’s chest. “ _What?_ ”

Johnny shrugged. “Sam’s match tomorrow. Half the dojos up here got Jap owners. I was watching the prelims yesterday, and a lot of the kids were moving exactly like yours do. She needs a little something extra to give her an edge.” 

“You want to...teach her the way of the fist?” 

“I want to teach her some bad-ass kicks before she competes tomorrow. Sometimes you need a little offense.”

“You’re a lunatic, Johnny Lawrence.”

He scrunched up his face, nipped at Daniel’s ear. “Yeah, you ain’t seen nothing yet, LaRusso.”


	7. Chapter 7

Because there was no one around to witness it, Johnny watched LaRusso sleep.

The San Francisco sky was still dark gray; they had a little time before the front desk called, and they had to get Sam ready. Daniel was running even hotter than yesterday, arm slung loose over Johnny’s waist. He wasn’t... _spooning_ him, exactly, just laying up against his back, foot hooked around Johnny’s ankle. His lips were slightly parted, hair pushed back on one side, where Johnny'd had his hands in it, scrambling to get a hold on something during sex.

 _I’m someone who had sex with a guy._ He turned it over in his head. His breath didn’t catch, the muscles in his face didn’t cringe in humiliation. In the quiet, he just focused on LaRusso chest rising and falling against his spine. _If there was ever a city to try it out..._

Daniel’s leg moved upwards, wrapping over Johnny’s knee and pulling him back, close.

Okay, nope. Line drawn. Just because it turned out he was kind of a homo didn’t mean he was a goddamn little spoon. He owned nunchucks, for fuck's sake.

“LaRusso, personal space,” he mumbled, detaching Daniel’s limbs from around him and getting out of bed. He smelled like dried sweat and whatever weird, starchy detergent they used to wash sheets here. In the living room, he could hear the coffee maker running, the creak of Miguel doing push-ups on the floor. 

He opened the bathroom door, grateful it had an entrance in their ( _their?_ ) bedroom, so he didn’t have to deal with any children before he got a grip. There were red crescents on his ribs where fingernails had dug in, a blonde cowlick stuck up near his temple. His skin looked...different. Brighter, or something. 

Getting laid always made him sleep like a log. Even if it was with a dude. _Christ, he got laid with a dude. With **LaRusso**. _

He wrestled with the stupid little hotel shampoo bottle as hot water filled the room with steam. His elbow banged against the wall of the stupid glass cube some genius put the shower in and swore, threw the bottle down on the ground.

A whoosh of cold air at his back made him flinch. Daniel slid open the shower door, left his track pants in a puddle on the floor, and stepped inside. The steam made his hair curl at the ends, over his ears. “We’ll save time if we jump in together.”

Johnny ducked his head. “The kids are awake.”

“The water’s loud.” He kissed the corner of Johnny’s mouth, before picking up the shampoo and pressing it into his palm.

So much touching, so much body heat. Was this what it would feel like to, like, have someone? Be a real adult with a real life?

“The lid’s busted, I’ll just rinse,” he mumbled. He couldn't look at him, afraid if he did LaRusso would use his mystical powers to read his mind and see something that wasn't there, it _wasn't._

“You’re freaking out a little.” It wasn’t a question. Johnny just scrubbed water through his hair. “Relax. Last night was for fun. It’s not like I’m expecting you to turn into Prince Charming.”

“Good, because I’m not.”

“I already got someone for the mushy stuff."

“Lucky you.” Shit. This time he couldn’t stop himself from cringing. Let himself get screwed like a cream puff _one time_ and now he was acting like some kind of bitch. He glared determinedly at the hot and cold knobs, his back to LaRusso. 

The shampoo bottle opened with a click. The smell of chemical vanilla filled the air, and his hands were in Johnny’s hair. “You want to talk about it? I won’t tell anyone you have feelings.”

Johnny resisted the urge to spin around and deck him, only because the shampoo stung his eyes when he tried to open them, and he didn't like to fight blind. “Forget it, I’m probably still drunk.”

“You know, the first time I kissed a boy was right before I moved here from Jersey.” Hands up on his scalp, dragging back down slow. God, it was a crime what Daniel could do with those hands. “And afterwards my stomach was in so many knots I ralphed on the sidewalk outside the Y."

Johnny snorted in spite of himself. "Sounds about right, you were kind of a pussy."

"A pussy who kicked your ass six months later." He worked Johnny's hair into a lather, and molded a lock into a spike. "I just mean, I won't take it as a comment on my performance if you're...feeling weird."

“Maybe you _did_ something weird."

Daniel laughed. "Trust me, I didn't."

Johnny tilted his head, let the shampoo wash down his back. "Yeah?”

"Yeah. You can't handle weird. _Yet_." Johnny balled his hands into fists. "Sorry, sorry. Just keeping it light. Working on not 'overreacting' to things, remember?" Daniel nudged him in the ribs. “You need me to tell you you're still a man, or something?"

"Fuck you, LaRusso."

"Fuck you? Think I already did!”

Johnny exhaled, the way he’d seen Daniel do, and opened his eyes. _Make a choice. Decide later if it’s the right one._

He turned around, got a hand in Daniel's wet hair and kissed him, slow and open-mouthed. Daniel lifted his leg up on the bottom of the fogged pane, looking far too proud of himself for how high he could get it.

“Your, uh, performance..."

"Yeah?" Daniel breathed into his mouth.

"I got no complaints." Johnny wrapped his arm under LaRusso’s other thigh, hoisted him up against the tiled wall. He could show off too.

He knew the steps to this dance much better than last night’s, something settling in his stomach. Hotel conditioner made a pretty decent lube in a pinch, and Daniel adjusted to his fingers with only a little gasp. He jerked off with his face in Johnny's neck as Johnny pushed into him, hard, fast.

"Go–God. Johnny, _fuck_." LaRusso’s back jerked an inch up the wall with every forceful thrust. Johnny’s arms ached a little from holding half his weight up, but took a breath, held on tighter. He was almost there. 

LaRusso’s leg, bent and hiked up high to leave him more open, more exposed, brushed against his shoulder. Orgasm welling up inside him, he bent his head down, hovering over the heated skin. God, he loved this. They should've been sticking it to each other like this for years.

Without breaking eye contact, he kissed Daniel’s bad knee.

LaRusso came, half on Johnny’s neck, a few seconds later. But that was probably a coincidence.

“I’m gonna be sore tomorrow,” Daniel said, wrapping a towel around his waist and handing Johnny one to do the same. 

Johnny smirked. “Yeah you are.”

He rolled his eyes. “I meant from standing like that in the shower. Should’ve stretched.”

“Yeah you should’ve.” He slapped LaRusso's ass as he leaned over to open the door.

If he hadn’t been so fucked out and off his game, he would’ve realized it was the wrong one, into the other bedroom.

“I–” Aisha clapped a hand over her eyes.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Johnny mumbled, thanking every available God he taken the towel.

“ _Dad!_ ” Sam shrieked. “Why?!”

Daniel's olive skin got even darker, blooming crimson in record speed. "Sam—"

She jumped off the bed and bolted into the living room.

“I didn’t see anything!” Aisha said. “Who knows what’s going on? I’m high on painkillers!”

“Thank you, Miss Robinson,” Johnny said, gruffly, and swung the door shut. 

Daniel sat down on the closed toilet. A second later, the door to the suite slammed. “And there she goes."

“We really can’t keep anyone in this room for more than two minutes, can we?”

* * *

Johnny found Sam down in the hotel gym, working a sandbag without any hand-wraps, still in her pajama shorts. A hasty, lopsided bun on top of her head was falling out, half that dark curly hair cascading down her back. 

He leaned on of the elliptical machines, a safe foot and a half behind her. “Nice form.”

Sam glanced at him in the mirrored wall, but didn’t say anything. He'd thrown on his jeans, boots, t-shirt _and_ sweatshirt, but still wished he'd packed about six more layers. He was definitely not wearing his _gi_ for the rest of the trip. Maybe for the rest of his life. Aisha might have grounds to sue him if she ever saw his skin again.

“So, what you saw...um...look, you’re like fourteen, right? You like...understand what...adults sometimes get physical, and they–"

“I’m _sixteen_ ,” she kneed the bag. “I know what sex is, you freak." 

“Oh thank God.” He was far too sober to have _that_ conversation.

"You think you're the first? My parents are into that poly crap, like they're retired to goddamn Fort Lauderdale.” A hard punch, rattling the chain. “And they’re not as sneaky as they think they are.”

“Okay…” Johnny frowned. “Hey, you need to drop your hip when you punch. You’re losing a lot of power when you raise it like that."

He walked over and held the bag steady. “Try it again, move in a straight line like you're hammering a nail in the wall.” 

Sam hesitated for a second, then adjusted her stance, punched. The bag moved against Johnny with a much more forceful thump.

“Good, do it again.” Sam did ten reps before he felt brave enough to keep talking. “Are you pissed because your dad’s a guy and I’m a guy? Because trust me, that part's fucking weird to me, too.”

“It’s not because Dad’s bi. I don’t care about that, he puts a stupid LaRusso Auto banner in the parade every year.” She hit the bag with a beautiful crescent kick, glaring at him with Daniel’s fiery brown eyes. God, that was freaky.

“It’s because it’s _you._ So much of the past year has been bullshit fights–” another kick. “–about Miyagi-Do verses Cobra Kai, which friends have suddenly decided they're mad at me or not–” another punch, one-two, like a boxer. “–Miguel pulling aggro asshole crap, and it’s all because you and my dad had some weird angry crush on each other? You dragged all of us into your weird drama, and it’s fucked up.”

Johnny blinked. He let go of the bag. “Your dad doesn’t have a crush on me. We’re _men_.”

Sam darted around the bag and charged at him. He blocked her twice, but she managed to knee him in the groin, hard. Fine. She wanted to fight like a man? He locked his arm around her, lifted her in the air above his shoulder. Sam drove her elbow into the back of his neck, and his arm went numb. Sam slipped out of his grip and landed back on her feet.

He felt a grin tugging at his mouth. “Knew you were a closet Cobra.”

“Takes a closet case to know one.”

He grabbed his own wrist to keep from flipping off a teenager. "Look. Whatever’s gone on between LaRusso and me, that’s our shit to deal with. You guys shouldn’t take it on as your own.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Is that your version of an apology?”

He pointed in her face. “Use that anger. It’s gonna help your offense.”

She sighed, rubbed her knuckles, which were turning an angry pink. "Wait, when you said _he_ didn't have-ew, do you _like_ my _dad?"_

"Of course not," Johnny snapped. "He's a grown man who eats raw fish. Now come on, let's get your kicks stronger before we head over to the mat."

* * *

“Remember to breathe,” Daniel said, as he headed to the edge of the mat with Sam. Her hair was tied in sleek French braids, her gi was pressed and perfectly white, and her expression was blank. “Especially when you’re off-balance, it’ll help you reorient yourself. Sam? Samantha.”

“LaRusso, she's got her _Star Trek_ things in.” Johnny pointed to the AirPods in Sam’s ears. Daniel rolled his eyes and took one out.

“Dad!”

He made a face. “What are you even listening to?”

"Doja Cat."

“I don’t get your psych-up music.”

She took out the other one, handed it her father, and smiled. “I don’t get your taste in men.”

Johnny choked on his beer, very glad he’d sent the other three kids to save their seats. Sam walked onto the mat, light on her feet as a leaf on the water. Mr. Miyagi would be proud, for that and her sass. 

“Why do I feel like this is her villain origin story?” Daniel asked, cradling his elbows. 

“She’ll be fine once she fights it out.” Johnny said. “By the way, she already knew you and Amanda are swingers.”

_“What?”_

He laughed. "Yeah. You're gonna have to get her like, one of those books written by a fancy shrink." 

Daniel took the cup of beer out of his hand and took a sip. 

Johnny sat between Miguel and Robby on the bleachers. The five of them watched as Sam bowed to her opponent, then immediately spiked him in his chest. Tiny but deadly, just like her father. 

“Hey. Listen up." He snapped his fingers so Aisha – sitting as far to the other side of the bench as she could – looked over. "All this Miyagi v. Cobra Kai shit? It's over. You’re gonna stop messing with each other. _All_ of you,” he added, when Robby’s eyes narrowed at Miguel. “LaRusso?”

“Mmm?” Daniel was tracking Sam with his eyes. _2-1 LaRusso._ “Yeah. Whatever Johnny says.”

Robby did a double take, then actually turned to Miguel to confirm he’d heard it too. Aisha sucked in her lips, stared up at the rafters in a weak attempt not to laugh.

Sam knocked her opponent down. Onto the finals. Daniel clapped too enthusiastically. 

“Sensei?” Miguel leaned over, talked out of the side of his mouth. “Did you get Mr. LaRusso drunk or something? He seems weird.”

“Shut up, Diaz.”

“You seem weird too. Your shoulders look looser.”

“You have been told to shut up.”

Sam’s final opponent was a boy from Bakersfield. All this way, and it still came down to local SoCal rivalries. He was built like a tank, hammy fists and a good foot on Sam. 

She didn’t even blink when she bowed. 

“That’s our girl,” Daniel said. 

Sam ducked and rolled and kept away from Bakersfield’s fists for as long as she could. Even managed to get in a solid, sturdy punch like Johnny taught her, just below his clavicle. But endurance was only part of the equation. She was getting tired, slower to block. It was 2-1 for Bakersfield. Then, with all his weight and height and a massive foot to the ribs, 3-1.

Sam fell hard on her back and the red flag went up. Point, match, tournament, to Alex Gomez of Golden Tiger Karate.

Daniel’s jaw tightened. Sam's eyes found him in the crowd, and she closed her eyes, breathed. She rolled into a kip up, back on her feet, and bowed to the victor.

“Damn. Good hustle. Good hustle, LaRusso!" Johnny stood, cut his eyes down to his students and Robby. “Hey, clap you little punks.”

Through the growing roar of the crowd, he heard Miguel mutter “-being so _weird!”_

The trophies had been hastily replaced after the earthquake, so Sam’s was the same size as the winner’s. What a bunch of PC bullshit. Still, Sam's face shone as one of the officials handed it over, with sweat and the endorphins of a good fight. He got that; there was nothing else like it. 

He hung back with Daniel while Aisha, Robby, and Miguel crowded her on the mat, hugging, slapping her back. Miguel, eyes wide with manic courage, kissed her cheek.

“Did Diaz just make a move?” Daniel asked in disbelief.

“It's just you LaRussos. You’ve got some kind of guido seduction magic.”

“Shut up, Johnny.” He said, amiably.

Johnny leaned into his ear. "Why don't you make me?"

LaRusso brushed his fingers against the inside Johnny’s wrist. "Oh, you should know by now that I got _all_ kinds of moves to make that happen."

 _Do you like my dad?_ He suppressed a shiver. Fucking _guido magic_.

It took a few minutes, but the swirling crush of spectators pushed the kids back towards them. Daniel let his fingers drop, stepped forward with his arms open. “Hey! Great job, Sammy.” 

He kissed Sam's sweaty forehead. Johnny saw her bare feet curl and uncurl on the mat. 

“...Thanks, Dad.”

"You did so great out there." She melted a little under the wattage of her father's biggest, most raw smile. Not one the one that sold cars or charmed All Valley Committees. The one that looked like he'd cracked open, was pouring all the light inside him into you. That hopeful, unbreakable part of Daniel LaRusso, that used to make Johnny flinch and try to shatter, because it made him feel useless and broken and like a loser, by comparison.

Now, he just didn't want to look away.

Sam leaned her head against his arm, giving in. "Not good enough, I guess."

“Hey,” Johnny looked over her head, smirked at LaRusso. “No shame in second place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed! this was so much fun to write.


End file.
